The power of the Internet lies partially in its ability to connect anyone to anyone. Yet over the last few years, as we’ve previously documented, governments from around the world have been at work to change control of Internet network addressing, creating the ability for certain leaders or countries to simply “opt out” of the world wide web. After Silicon Valley pushed back hard in 2012, the US Government stood up against the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the transfer was … [Read more...]

What day of the week is best to send an email to your target customers? In the early days, the thought was to avoid Monday and Fridays – two days when people are returning to the office and starting to dig themselves out of the work leftover from the previous week, or telling themselves that a project can best be started on Monday after a full weekend of rest. But with mobile devices, the logic has changed. So, when should you send that email blast?
eMarketer offers insight in its new report … [Read more...]

How many quizzes do you find yourself taking each day? Or is that itself the start of a quiz question? If you think quizzes are popping up more often, you’re absolutely correct. And the explosion is drive by their effectiveness. It turns out quizzes are the golden prospectors for your data. It is surprising what people will offer to figure out what kind of state, fruit or Star Wars character they are.
Today, a quiz is one of the most effective ways to gather detailed data on a user, creating … [Read more...]

Too often marketers operate in the abstract, or at 30,000 feet where messaging is more important than results. A bit like Marie Antoinette and her famous “let them eat cake” line, marketers can slip up badly when they do not have a grasp of the real conditions of the market. Or worse, when customers speak, we don’t listen.
We are in the midst of a series on how you can improve your marketing by working with Customer Service departments. Today the focus is on listening.
Many years ago I … [Read more...]

The Wall Street Journal reports that many marketers are questioning whether or not they are getting their monies worth by buying ad space through agency-owned programmatic operations. We believe it is time for Transparent Online Ad Buying.
Many agencies over the last 5 years have built groups to control the placement of their client’s digital advertising. As a greater percentage of ad spend has shifted online, these groups appear to be placing ads OK, but no one is sure about their decision … [Read more...]

As we’ve written about previously, the Obama administration earlier this year came up with a plan to transition ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the people who control internet addressing, to an international board by September 2015. We called it a mistake then, and unfortunately we are already being proven right. The Internet oversight transition is and will remain a huge mistake damaging the internet for decades.
For review. ICANN maintains the root-zone file … [Read more...]

Part 2 of the Finding Venture Capital series is in fact about not finding venture capital, and instead about the bootsrap method.
Sometimes entrepreneurs think that they need a whole lot more money than they actually need. They think that having 7 digits in the bank is going to somehow make their company more successful. While cash can certainly help, it isn't everything.
The other issue is that when you take a large amount of cash like 7 figures+ you are typically going to be giving away … [Read more...]

As I’ve written about this week, email is both the most effective online marketing tool, and holds concerns about privacy and consumer rights going forward. But help may be on the way. Persado is a company that brings artificial intelligence to the problem.
Outlined in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, the company writes advertising emails and landing pages using an AI engine. Using a combination of emotion, product or service characteristics and call to action, the company has seen response … [Read more...]

The money is clearly moving online. Big advertisers like Facebook and Google are seeing their profits rise. But what about you? Are you getting your fair or unfair share? And will your partners really scale their web business?
There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on the myriad of middlemen who have gone public but are yet to see profitability. Rocket Fuel, YuMe, Rubicon Project and Millennial Media are all mentioned as companies that are seeing revenue grow, … [Read more...]

This week we’ve been looking at ideas for aligning marketing and sales teams, a task that sometimes seems as difficult as solving the challenges of the Middle East. We’ve looked at defining a qualified lead, cooperating to define core messages and a value proposition, and the final step – cooperative product sales training.
Here’s how too many product sales training sessions usually go: bring in the sales team for 3 to 4 days. Plant them in a conference room or an auditorium for 8 hours a … [Read more...]